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For all its trials and tribulations, academic work is far pleasanter than much other work.

So we thought it would be interesting to ask a few scholars about their memories of particularly ghastly holiday jobs or jobs they did before deciding to make a career within universities. Were these just awful experiences best forgotten, or can they help to put current problems into perspective, offer salutary insights into other people¡¯s lives or even open up possible new avenues for research?

What did we discover? As he explains in a feature published in this week¡¯s issue, Richard Sugg ¨C lecturer in English at Durham University ¨C had a particularly ghastly time of it working in a cheese factory. Yet this not only taught him about ¡°the ordinary madness of people who work in places like cheese factories and get used to it¡±, it also opened up perspectives that have influenced all his later research, notably about the ¡°dirty realities¡± of life that often get lost in the ¡°flat and bloodless pages¡± of much academic writing.

Sas Mays, senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Westminster, describes the very real downsides of working as a shopfitter¡¯s labourer ¨C which led to chronic fatigue, vibration white finger and even foot rot, ¡°picked up from wearing a dead man¡¯s steel toecap boots I had found on site¡± ¨C and then going on to set up his own painting and decorating business. Yet the latter in particular also gave him skills that have proved very useful for ¡°academic project management and funding applications¡±.

Others report on horrible bosses, harassment in the supermarket and scenes of life in the burns unit, behind the scenes at a football club and in ¡°the nut division¡± of a large food company. Even work as a bellhop (carrying guests¡¯ bags to their rooms) in a glitzy Catskills hotel like the ones featured in the film Dirty Dancing offered some surprising insights to one future academic, about ¡°the war within every profession¡± and the ¡°deviousness¡± it often takes to succeed.

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com